“This is a natural extension of our current presence in Elie, Neepawa, Brandon, Russell and the Swan River region in Manitoba,” AgWest’s CEO Ronald Slaats says in a release. “This expansion brings us closer to Prairie farmers, enabling us to provide the localized support and premium solutions they rely on to succeed.”

AgWest, which is based at Elie and operates six shops across Manitoba, is certainly geographically closer to the Yorkton and Weyburn shops, while Agriterra’s footprint is otherwise all in Alberta.

Agriterra’s current staff at the two Saskatchewan shops “will be retained to ensure a seamless transition and maintain uninterrupted service for customers,” AgWest says.

Apart from the Agco roster of brands such as Massey Ferguson and Fendt, AgWest also deals in Claas, MacDon, Schulte, RoGator and TerraGator.

AgWest got formed in a merger of two other Manitoba dealership chains that were taken over back in 2014 by Toromont, which in turn sold the AgWest business to Dutch equipment distributor Mechan International in 2023.

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The new 61-foot wide FD261 FlexDraper header will be available in limited quantities for the 2025 harvest season.

“It’ll fit any of the combines our current FD2 (series) will fit on, as long as they have the lift capacity and auger length,” Russ Henderson, product manager for the FlexDraper line, says. “That was one of our goals, to keep it as common as we could with the FD2, just make it larger.

“We tried to minimize the amount of change on it, so all your wear components and replacement parts are the same as the FD2 series, other than the sickle will be longer.”

As part of that common component strategy, the new FD261 is built on the same frame design as other FD2 headers.

“The FD2 was our first major frame change in 20 years,” Henderson adds. “And part of the thinking and development was to build a better platform to allow us to go larger. That meant when we went to develop the 61-foot, we already had the right frame structure and foundation we could build on to bring it out to that size.”

The FD261 was designed primarily for controlled-traffic farming operations that are common in Australia and South America — hence the 61-foot width. It allows one extra foot for overlap in those systems.

But with the recent growth in combine size, Prairie farmers here have expressed interest in it as well.

“Surprisingly, we’re seeing a lot of interest in North America,” he adds. “It won’t be huge numbers, but there’s more interest than what we expected. That’s primarily due to the new, larger combines that are out there, whether it’s Deere’s X9, Claas’ 8900 or the new AF11 from Case IH and the CR11 from New Holland. The Ideal 10 has been around for a while, but it’s in the 775-horsepower range as well.”

Transporting the FD261 down the road will require a trailer. It can’t use the same EasyMove transport system some of MacDon’s other headers do.

“That helps keep the weight down,” Henderson says. “It helps keep the weight fairly close to a fully loaded FD250.”

There are three sections across the header that allow for a total of 46 inches of vertical wing range, allowing it to contour over terrain. Even the centre section has some oscillating ability.

“We can still use ContourMax (contouring wheels), which we have on all our FD250s, available as an option,” Henderson says. “And we also still have our stabilizer wheels. The difference with the 261 is you can put two sets of stabilizer wheels on it. You can adjust them zero to 18 inches.”

Draper belt depth is the same 50 inches as on the other FD2 models, The upper cross auger behind the drapers extends almost the full width of the header.

“Most of the competition, on their 61-foots, have about an eight-foot gap on each end of the upper cross auger,” Henderson says. “With that, we noticed you get canola hanging up in the corner and lump feeding. We ran our auger almost to the end and have a small piece of shielding there to cover it, so there is nowhere for crop to hang up.”

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Guelph-based Linamar announced Wednesday it has an agreement in place worth $260 million to buy 100 per cent of the equity in Salford, which makes fertilizer application and tillage equipment at three plants in Canada and two in the U.S.

Linamar said it expects to finance the deal through its existing credit lines and close the purchase during the second quarter of this year, subject to the usual conditions and regulatory approvals.

Salford will “continue to leverage its established manufacturing and distribution network” and sell its products under the Salford brand, Linamar said.

Salford Group president Geof Gray said combining Linamar’s resources and brand strengths with Salford’s “will enable Salford to compete and innovate at a higher level with greater market coverage, delivering even more value to dealers and farmers.”

Linamar CEO Linda Hasenfratz said the crop nutrition application and tillage segments where Salford operates are “areas we had identified in our agriculture growth strategy as highly attractive segments for future product diversification.”

“Through MacDon, we already have an established market-leading position in the harvesting segment,” Linamar chief operating officer Jim Jarrell said in the same release. “Tillage and crop nutrition are a natural complement to that product portfolio, which will allow us to accelerate sales of all products.”

Salford, founded in 1978 at Salford, Ont., about 35 km east of London, today has manufacturing plants at Salford and nearby Norwich, Ont., as well as sites at Elie, Man., about 35 km west of Winnipeg; Osceola, Iowa, about 80 km south of Des Moines; and Cornelia, Georgia, about 100 km northeast of Atlanta.

The company’s product lines today include tillage equipment, pneumatic and spinner-type fertilizer spreaders and cover crop seeders under the Salford, AerWay and Valmar brands. It’s billed as the only company in North America carrying full lines of surface and sub-surface granular applicators.

Linamar, meanwhile, is no stranger to agriculture, having owned and operated White Farm Equipment and Western Combine in the 1980s. It later shed both those businesses but bought Harvestec in 2015, then took up Winnipeg-based MacDon for about $1.2 billion in 2018. Harvestec corn harvesting header lines have since been rebranded under the MacDon name.

Jarrell said the ag and food sectors are a “key element of our Linamar 2100 strategic roadmap,” which the company laid out following the MacDon takeover. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Case IH and New Holland, both owned by CNH, said separately Thursday they have partnership agreements in place with Winnipeg-based MacDon to make co-branded headers, for sale in almost all of Case and New Holland’s markets internationally.

The new MacDon draper headers are expected to be available for order through Case IH and New Holland dealers worldwide — except in South America — starting in early 2022.

A draper header uses conveyors, rather than the augers seen on conventional-style headers, to carry crop coming in off the cutter bar toward the centre of the header for feeding into the combine.

“By pairing Case IH’s industry-leading portfolio of Axial-Flow combines and a robust dealer network with MacDon’s draper header expertise and products, we aim to deliver a best-in-class harvesting package for producers,” Case IH global president Scott Harris said in that division’s release.

As for New Holland, the NH agriculture division said its new MacDon co-branded draper headers would complement its own lines of combine headers.

New Holland will continue to make its own Varifeed grain headers and CornMaster corn headers, “allowing the brand to offer the best header solutions for all customers,” the company said.

“Bringing together the expertise from both brands will unlock the potential to significantly increase our customers’ in-field performance and decrease their running costs,” Lars Skjoldager Sorensen, head of harvesting product management for New Holland Agriculture, said in the same release Thursday.

“This partnership creates a best-case scenario for both brands, our dealers, and most importantly, our customers.”

MacDon, which makes windrowers, pull-type mowers and pickup headers as well as draper headers, started in 1949 as Killbery Industries and was renamed after its acquisition by the MacDonald family in 1971. Linamar, a Canadian industrial equipment and parts manufacturer, bought the MacDon business in 2018. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Royal Reesink announced Friday it has bought a controlling stake in Hepson and has a partnership deal in place with the Kehler family, owners of GenAg. Hepson operates a dealership just north of Brandon; GenAg has two, one at Portage la Prairie and the other between Winkler and Morden.

GenAg specializes in potato equipment and carries brands including Claas, Spudnik, Kubota, Horsch and Valley; Hepson sells Claas’ Jaguar forage harvesters along with Kubota, MacDon, Salford and other brands.

“In Royal Reesink, we have found a business partner who understands the dynamics of agriculture and has a good track record in our sector,” the Kehler family said in a statement in Reesink’s release. The family keeps a “significant ownership share,” Reesink said.

“We’re approaching retirement age and wanted to guarantee the continued existence of the company, but also further develop the company. Royal Reesink can play an important role in this,” Hepson chiefs Sid Patterson and Paul Hepworth said in the same release.

Reesink made its first inroads in ag equipment sales in Canada in October last year when it bought Claas dealer Tingley’s Harvest Centre, which has dealerships at Lloydminster and Vegreville, Alta. and North Battleford, Sask.

Reesink Canada Holdings, the Canadian subsidiary of Royal Reesink, will operate Hepson and hold the GenAg partnership stake. The holding company also operates Tingley’s and Reesink Canada Wholesale, the Canadian distributor of Agrifac sprayers.

“By investing in Canada, we are diversifying our field of activity and making ourselves less vulnerable to geopolitics and weather disruptions,” Royal Reesink CEO Gerrit van der Scheer said in the company’s release.

“Canada is a stable agricultural market, where there is plenty of ongoing investment. Farmers there are very open to progressive European technology. So it’s been a logical next step to further invest in Canada,” Erwin Ros, managing director of Reesink Canada Holdings, said in the same release.

Based at Apeldoorn, about 90 km east of Amsterdam, Royal Reesink’s businesses worldwide have about 2,100 employees in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the U.K., Kazakhstan, Denmark, South Africa and Turkey.

Overall, Reesink reported pro forma revenue of about 720 million euros (C$1.06 billion) last year and expects revenue to reach 850 million euros ($1.25 billion) in 2019.

Financial terms of the deals for GenAg and Hepson weren’t disclosed in Friday’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

Correction, Sept. 17, 2019: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Royal Reesink acquired a controlling stake in GenAg. We regret the error.

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Since then, the issues have ballooned, but Linamar isn’t panicking.

“We’re trying to look past (the trade uncertainty) a little bit because there’s a lot going on there and we don’t know where things are going to pan out,” Linda Hasenfratz, CEO of Linamar, said Tuesday during a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

In December, the Guelph-based manufacturing giant announced it would purchase Winnipeg-based agricultural equipment manufacturer MacDon for $1.2 billion.

Linamar mainly manufacturers auto parts and owns one other agriculture manufacturer, Hungary-based Mezogep, which produces combine headers under the Harvestec brand.

The idea to purchase MacDon came after careful planning on Linamar’s part. A few years ago, the company decided to plan for its next 100 years by identifying future global challenges. Linamar chose six opportunities for growth from those challenges: transportation, infrastructure, food, water, power and an aging population.

To start, Linamar focused mostly on transportation and infrastructure, but the company also began exploring ways to address food production challenges. Linamar started to research what opportunities there were to buy an agricultural equipment manufacturers.

“(We) were thrilled to find (an agricultural manufacturer) almost in our backyard, right here in Canada, that we thought was a real world leader in terms of their harvesting product and could be a great cornerstone from which we would be build our global ag business,” Hasenfratz said about Linamar’s decision to buy MacDon.

Linamar plans to grow the MacDon business and keep operations in Winnipeg, according to Hasenfratz. While its agricultural focus is currently on MacDon, in the future it could look to acquire more agriculture companies.

“We will absolutely continue to build on our ag business both from a greenfield perspective or growing MacDon and its products and other products that they could potentially develop or maybe complement that with other acquisitions as well,” he said.

Linamar is a global company with offices and manufacturing plants all over the world — including in the U.S.

When Linamar bought MacDon, the North American Free Trade Agreement was being renegotiated — and since the MacDon deal closed in February, U.S. trade relations have become more strained, with U.S. President Donald Trump placing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

While Hasenfratz isn’t impressed with the current trade situation, she said Linamar isn’t making any rash decisions such as moving all manufacturing to the U.S. or out of the country.

“I prefer to focus on the facts and not the emotions and that’s how we’ve tried to manage through every situation, whether it be the economic crisis of 2009 or the political turmoil of 2018.”

Hasenfratz does, however, predict that if the trade issues aren’t dealt with quickly, there could be an economic recession.

“Trade wars are no joke. Ultimately we all suffer higher costs; higher costs reduce demand, reduced demand means markets go down, economy collapses, a lot of people lose their jobs and that means more reduced demand,” she said.

— Ashley Robinson writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Glacier FarmMedia company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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Guelph-based Linamar Corp., which markets the Harvestec brand of corn harvesting headers in North America, on Thursday announced a “definitive” agreement to buy 100 per cent of Winnipeg-based MacDon and its group of companies for $1.2 billion.

The deal, to be financed mainly through a new term loan facility also announced Thursday, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018 pending the usual regulatory approvals.

The purchase price is near what MacDon was reported to be seeking as far back as 2013, when other media outlets quoted unnamed sources as saying the Winnipeg company had enlisted Goldman Sachs to find a buyer.

Given its own “highly complementary” stake in harvesting equipment — which also includes the Oros brand of corn and sunflower headers it markets in Europe — Linamar said it expects to see “modest synergies” from the deal.

Once the deal closes, MacDon, which makes windrowers, draper headers, pull-type mowers and pickup headers, will merge with Linamar’s existing agriculture harvesting business, which is based in Hungary.

MacDon, which also operates offices in the U.S., Australia, Russia and Brazil, set up its own European sales and distribution office in Wiesbaden, Germany in October and opened a major new parts distribution centre in Winnipeg last year.

Linamar said the MacDon deal will allow it to offer a full lineup of grain and hay harvesting equipment and to expand its ag platform in “new and underserviced markets” worldwide.

“As it expands, MacDon will benefit from Linamar’s established manufacturing footprint in Asia and Europe, along with employing best practices from both Linamar and MacDon,” Linamar said in a release.

MacDon’s sales network of about 1,400 dealers and distributors worldwide gives it a “major competitive advantage in the industry,” Linamar said.

Linamar CEO Linda Hasenfratz described the deal Thursday as “a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move our agriculture business into a market-leading position while providing meaningful diversification to the end markets we serve.”

Linamar, she said, sees the long-term growth fundamentals for the ag industry as “very strong given the growing and developing global population” with the market in its “early stages of cyclical recovery.”

MacDon, she said, “will be the centrepiece of our agriculture business, which includes our existing European corn header business, highly complementary to MacDon products. We get diversification, innovation, growth and a solid deal; we couldn’t be happier.”

Linamar’s businesses also include machining, assembly and forging, focused mainly on engine, transmission and driveline components, plus its Skyjack brand of scissor lifts, booms and telehandlers.

MacDon started in 1949 as Killbery Industries, which made sprayers, grain augers, discer seeders, cultivators and manure spreaders. The company then launched one of the first self-propelled windrowers, in 1951.

The company was renamed MacDon following its acquisition by the MacDonald family in 1971, and expanded into the U.S. market in 1986 through its own dealer network.

MacDon, which also has a deal to manufacture John Deere-branded windrowers for the U.S. ag equipment giant, maintains a major manufacturing plant in Winnipeg with one of the largest powdercoat paint systems in North America. — AGCanada.com Network

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The R1s are available in 13– and 16-foot working widths.

One of the features the company was highlighting at the show was the dealer-installed Road Friendly Transport narrow-fold option. Taking up only nine feet (2.75 metres) on the road, the R1s will be one of the easiest machines to move from field to field.

The header linkage design provides “a fast-acting up and back motion with a wide range of travel,” according to the company press release. The company also claims the 129 inch (3.28 metre) conditioning rollers are the widest available in a comparable machine at the moment. And buyers have four choices when it comes to conditioning systems. They can opt for steel or polyurethane rolls, a finger conditioner or nothing at all.

The disc-style cutter bar uses shear-pins for protection. And when a shear pin breaks from hitting a solid object, each disc assembly lifts up and away from an obstruction in order to help limit damage. The R1s use larger and sturdier gears to minimize stress along the redesigned cutter bar driveline.

For a video look at the R1 Series machines, go to our videos page at grainews.ca.

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